Dave Winer has been thinking about, and recently writing about, a new idea: Reading Lists. OPML is a really useful file structure that just about everyone who uses a feed aggregator, like bloglines, is already using without necessarily knowing it. Most readers keep subscribed feeds for a user in OPML format, for easy importing and exporting. If you export your OPML feed you get a XML file of your feeds, which other feed readers understand. The problem with opml files from readers is that they are static, meaning I can give you my OPML file but you will never know if I add or delete feeds unless I tell you and give you the new file. All you get is a snapshot of my feeds from the moment that I share my file with you. Dave thinks these files should be dynamic, which means that I can share my opml file, or as he calls it my reading list, and anyone who subscribes to it will always have the current version, no matter how often I amend that list. There is very little technology needed to allow this to happen – the various feed readers simply need to agree to support dynamic lists and allow people to share them permanently. Dave’s trying to make this happen. If he succeeds, we’ll all be able to subscribe to reading lists from people we trust on a given subject, and good feeds will be that much easier to find. Fred Oliveira wrote about this recently as well. In a comment, Eric Lin writes: i could easily see this not only as a way to share my reading list with others i know, but also to be matched with others i don’t know with common interests. what if the system could match me with other people who have similar tech, music or lifestyle feeds as i do. it would be a fantastic way to make new connections as well as strengthen existing ones, and i could see communities forming around overlapping feeds. these communities might be stronger than those that form around a single website because they’d have more in common. Yeah, exactly. As soon as people start to think about this idea, a lot of other interesting ideas start to spring up. A real world example of where we need this is our Web2.0WorkGroup. Feeds for each blog are linked, and we have → Read More
Our OPML experiment with Dave Winer (listen to Dave’s podcast here too) has captured the attention of a bunch of people, and new applications to leverage directories of blogs are being created by some really smart people. Here’s what we have so far: On September 29, 2005, I created the OPML directory of TechCrunch posts that you can see on the sidebar of Scripting.com. This was easily done with the OPML Editor and is updated daily. Later that night, Niall Kennedy created a Moveable Type template to do this automatically. Matt Mullenweg did the same for WordPress. Today we heard from Kosso that he’s created a flash widget to display the directory (image to left) and has placed it in the right sidebar of his blog. It has a great design and avoids page refreshes of the orginal box on Dave’s site. As soon as I can find the time I am going to implement Matt’s wordpress plugin to output our posts automatically, and with Kosso’s permission put his his widget out our site to replace our basic category system on the right sidebar. OPML is awesome. → Read More
Product: OPML Editor Founder: Dave Winer Dave Winer has been working on outlining software for over 20 years. Check out his OPML Editor (OPML stands for Outline Processor Markup Language) that has recently come out of private beta – people are using it for everything from writing and updating simple to-do lists to creating and editing blogs. It’s extremely versatile and it’s open source. OPML an XML-based format that allows exchange of outline-structured information between applications running on different operating systems and environments. Link Since people are writing exhaustively about the product and the technology (and using it for incredibly creative things), I want to talk about it from a different angle. For those of you familiar with Seth Godin, you’ll know what a Purple Cow is. The basic idea of the purple cow is that for products to be noticed in today’s world of fragmented attention and product saturation, it has to be something really special. You don’t notice cows any more no matter how cool they are (because they are basically all the same), but you sure would notice a big purple cow munching on some grass in a field somewhere. Dave has in my opinion masterfully crafted a purple cow with his OPML Editor. I’ve been witnessing its development and launch for a while now, and I’m impressed. The first time I saw the software in action was earlier this year in New York (Dave gave me a demo). The second time I saw it was just before the Gnomedex conference this year in Seattle. That’s about the time that Dave put his marketing efforts into high gear. Step 1 – Dave “Sneezes” towards other Sneezers After the sofware was (mostly) baked, Dave invited a small group of trusted friends to bang on it. Because this was such a select group, the people involved really felt special (and they were). They went out of their way to provide good feedback. He took their input and made changes. Then he increased the size of the group to 20 or so (I was in this group). At Gnomedex, he increased the size further. All the while, Dave was getting free QA and product work, and these people were blogging about how awesome and powerful it was. Lots of people read the blogs of the testers, and want to know more. Heck, I begged him to be on the invite → Read More
What a great weekend to be in the bay area: BAR Camp on Friday-Sunday: For those of us not invited to Foo Camp this year, there is an alternative which looks to be equally (or more) exciting: BAR Camp. No invitation required. It’s not anti-Foo Camp, it’s just different. I’m looking forward to attending (and blogging) about the event. As Ross Mayfield says, “The important thing is that when good people get together, great things happen.” Socialtext is donating the use of it’s office and wifi. Ross Mayfield: Bar Camp is not anti-FOO OPML RoadShow on Saturday: From Dave Winer on Geeks.opml.org: OPML Roadshow in California, August 20, 7PM! Mark your calendars, the OPML Roadshow comes to California on August 20, in Berkeley, at the Hillside Club. 7PM. This is the largest venue so far, it can hold over 200 people. It seems we’ll likely fill a good portion of the seats. And if the OPML Editor isn’t publicly available by then, I’ll do something memorable and just a little embarassing. Thanks to Sylvia Paull and Jeff Ubois for helping put this event together. This is an open event, anyone can attend. We’ll be at both. → Read More
